Enabling Pinch Zoom Trackpad Gestures in Firefox

You may have noticed that from about version 4 and upwards Firefox has turned off support for pinch to zoom. As a Mac user this will no doubt be something you’ll want to turn back on. It’s simple to do. Here is how:

Open a new Tab and type in “about:config” (without the quote) in the address bar

You will be asked to confirm to continue. Just do it.

Search for the term “browser.gesture” or “pinch” (without the quote marks). Either term will do.

Edit each browser.gesture.pinch setting as follows:

browser.gesture.pince.in — Value = cmd_fullZoomReduce

browser.gesture.pinch.in.shift — Value = cmd_fullZoomReset

browser.gesture.pinch.latched — Value = false

browser.gesture.pinch.out — Value = cmd_fullZoomEnlarge

browser.gesture.pinch.out.shift — Value = cmd_fullZoomReset

browser.gesture.pinch.threshold — Value = 40 to 100 (set it to a number that works for you)

To change the above values you simply double click the Value area on the settings table.

You will be changing the settings from this:

… over to this:

Choose the threshold that works for you. I have it set to 50. I’ve seen people saying it works well for them on various settings, from as low as 40 and up to about 80. The default is usually 150, and this may make the zooming feature awkward for most people. A lower number typically works better.

Actually I would have thought Mozilla would just make it an option in the preferences. Turn pinch zoom off, turn pinch zoom on. It used to support this track-pad gesture by default, then it was removed because some people had some sort of issue with it under certain circumstances. Anyway, I am glad there is at least some way to turn it back on.